NIST Awards $4 Million for 2018 Small Businesses Innovation Research Program

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GAITHERSBURG, Md.—The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded $4 million in grants to 21 small businesses to support innovative technology development.

Awardees in 15 states will receive Phase I or Phase II funding through NIST’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. The competitively selected awardees submitted proposals in response to NIST’s call for innovations in nine specific technology areas, including cybersecurity and privacy, physical infrastructure and resilience, and data and modeling.

“The NIST SBIR Program is an opportunity for small companies and entrepreneurial start-ups to contribute to the important mission of NIST, advancing measurement science and technologies in ways that enhance economic growth,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Walter G. Copan. “These awards demonstrate the innovative potential of small businesses, which are engines of U.S. commerce and employment. More than 80 percent of the awards are going to companies with fewer than 20 employees, and over half of the awardee companies are fewer than 10 years old.”

Phase I awardees receive up to $100,000 to establish the merit, feasibility and commercial potential of the proposed research and development. After completing their Phase I projects, awardees may vie for Phase II funding of up to $300,000 to continue their efforts. In Phase III, non-SBIR funds are used for technology commercialization.

The NIST SBIR program has supported the development and advancement of a variety of technologies in fields including cybersecurity, manufacturing, the “internet of things” and more.

The 2018 Phase I awardees are:

Advanced Communications, Networks, and Scientific Data Systems

Pollere, Inc. (San Mateo, California) $99,697Secure Role-Based System for Distributed Network Measurement – a flexible measurement system for information networks that can ensure the privacy of data and role-based authorization. It can also help users prevent and quickly recover from costly downtime.

Advanced Manufacturing and Material Measurements

Advanced Silicon Group (Lincoln, Massachusetts) $100,000Measuring the Concentration of Host-Cell Proteins in Biomanufacturing Using Silicon Nanowire Array Sensors – a low-cost quantitative sensor for biomanufacturing that can help improve the quality and safety of biopharmaceuticals.

Applied NanoFluorescence, LLC (Houston, Texas) $99,970Multimode Chiroptical Spectrometer for Nanoparticle Characterization – a new scientific instrument that will enable fast, sensitive and quantitative analysis of complex nanoparticle samples, including their right or left “handedness,” which can have dramatic biological effects.

OG Technologies, Inc. (Washtenaw, Michigan) $100,000Manufacturing Data Compiler for Visualization Based on Engineering-Driven Machine Learning – a data analytics and visualization software tool designed to bridge the gap between available data and the information demanded by users in manufacturing settings.

Physical Infrastructure and Resilience

Steven Winter Associates, Inc. (Norwalk, Connecticut) $97,883Self-Configuring Residential Conditioned Air Zoning System for Low-Energy Homes – a system that allows the configuration and control of conditioned air zones throughout a house to control air flow and optimize comfort and energy use.

Data and Modeling

MBSE Tools, Inc. (Alpharetta, Georgia) $300,000Developing Model-Based Tools for the Design and Improvement of Manufacturing Systems – software tools that can provide answers to fundamental business questions about product selection, resource planning, scheduling and logistical control to support the design and improvement of manufacturing systems.

Metrosage, LLC (Volcano, California) $300,000Interactive Software Tools for Processing QIFformatted Part Models to Generate Realistic and Accurate Measurement Plans and Programs in Standard Digital Languages – free, open source tools that will demonstrate the maturity of the ANSI Quality Information Framework for manufacturing and facilitate development of commercial applications.

Tetramer Technologies, LLC (Pendleton, South Carolina) $299,951Rational Design of sub-100-nm Polystyrene Particles with a Low Coefficient of Variation in Size –a synthetic method to produce and purify highly uniform 100-nm and sub-100-nm diameter nanoparticles for use as latex size standards for applications such as the calibration of electron microscopes, particle counters and contamination monitors used in the semiconductor industry.

Systems

Cadre Research Labs, LLC (Chicago, Illinois) $299,400Development, Validation, and Implementation of CMC Algorithm into a Software Platform for Firearm Analysis – implementation of a NIST-developed comparison algorithm for firearm forensics into a commercially available tool.

Nikira Labs, Inc. (Santa Clara, California) $299,424Large Field of View Microscope for Rapid, High-Resolution Imaging – a high-resolution microscope that can rapidly image a large field of view for multiple imaging modes and can provide imaging of individual cells.

XpressRules, LLC (Spokane, Washington) $300,000XpressRules-PM: Commercial Implementation of PM/NGAC – a natural language-based toolkit for implementing New Generation Access Control, an effective and scalable approach for deploying “smart” access control and consent solutions in dynamic scenarios such as those found in health care, banking, law enforcement and more.

NIST promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. NIST is a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. To learn more about NIST, visit www.nist.gov.